Recent Posts

1401

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Create a modern version of Lotus Agenda

« Last post by 40hz on August 01, 2014, 01:59 PM »

I used to use Agenda when it first came out. But I soon switched over to GrandView, and then (reluctantly) Ecco when GrandView was discontinued.

To this day, I still prefer a single-panel outline paradigm. And nothing ever worked quite so well for me (YMMV) as GrandView did. Closest ever was MaxThink - although that, by itself, had nowhere near the capabilities that GrandView offered.

Forget Agenda. Bring back GrandView! The 700+ page User Guide can be found here. Give it a skim and you'll see what I mean.

 

1402

Living Room / Re: My cat needs your thoughts | RIP Saffron my dearest cat

« Last post by 40hz on July 31, 2014, 05:34 PM »

Sending the most positive Zen thoughts I possibly can.

1403

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by 40hz on July 31, 2014, 04:20 PM »

From this article over at Quanta Magazine's website:

Hints of Life’s Start Found in a Giant Virus



At more than 1.5 micrometers long, pithovirus is the largest virus ever discovered — larger even than some bacteria. Many of its 500 genes are unrelated to any other genes on this planet.


By: Carrie Arnold   

July 10, 2014


Chantal Abergel and Jean-Michel Claverie were used to finding strange viruses. The married virologists at Aix-Marseille University had made a career of it. But pithovirus, which they discovered in 2013 in a sample of Siberian dirt that had been frozen for more than 30,000 years, was more bizarre than the pair had ever imagined a virus could be.

In the world of microbes, viruses are small — notoriously small. Pithovirus is not. The largest virus ever discovered, pithovirus is more massive than even some bacteria. Most viruses copy themselves by hijacking their host’s molecular machinery. But pithovirus is much more independent, possessing some replication machinery of its own. Pithovirus’s relatively large number of genes also differentiated it from other viruses, which are often genetically simple — the smallest have a mere four genes. Pithovirus has around 500 genes, and some are used for complex tasks such as making proteins and repairing and replicating DNA. “It was so different from what we were taught about viruses,” Abergel said.

The stunning find, first revealed in March, isn’t just expanding scientists’ notions of what a virus can be. It is reframing the debate over the origins of life...

What I found particularly fascinating was this paragraph:

...Abergel and Claverie, however, believe that viruses emerged from cells. While Forterre and collaborators contend that the unique genes found in giant viruses are a sign that they evolved before modern cells, Abergel and Claverie have a different explanation: Giant viruses may have evolved from a line of cells that is now extinct. According to this theory, the ancestor of giant viruses lost its ability to replicate as an independent life form and was forced to rely on other cells to copy its DNA. Pieces of these ancient cells’ genes survive in modern mimivirus, pandoravirus, and pithovirus, which would explain the unique genes found in this group. “Life didn’t have one single ancestor,” Claverie said. “There were a lot of cell-like organisms that were all competing, and there was one winner, which formed the basis for life as we know it today.”

Read the full article (and see the photos) here.
 

1404

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by 40hz on July 31, 2014, 04:06 PM »

From this article over at Quanta Magazine's website:

Hints of Life’s Start Found in a Giant Virus



At more than 1.5 micrometers long, pithovirus is the largest virus ever discovered — larger even than some bacteria. Many of its 500 genes are unrelated to any other genes on this planet.


By: Carrie Arnold   

July 10, 2014


Chantal Abergel and Jean-Michel Claverie were used to finding strange viruses. The married virologists at Aix-Marseille University had made a career of it. But pithovirus, which they discovered in 2013 in a sample of Siberian dirt that had been frozen for more than 30,000 years, was more bizarre than the pair had ever imagined a virus could be.

In the world of microbes, viruses are small — notoriously small. Pithovirus is not. The largest virus ever discovered, pithovirus is more massive than even some bacteria. Most viruses copy themselves by hijacking their host’s molecular machinery. But pithovirus is much more independent, possessing some replication machinery of its own. Pithovirus’s relatively large number of genes also differentiated it from other viruses, which are often genetically simple — the smallest have a mere four genes. Pithovirus has around 500 genes, and some are used for complex tasks such as making proteins and repairing and replicating DNA. “It was so different from what we were taught about viruses,” Abergel said.

The stunning find, first revealed in March, isn’t just expanding scientists’ notions of what a virus can be. It is reframing the debate over the origins of life...

What I found particularly fascinating was this paragraph:

...Abergel and Claverie, however, believe that viruses emerged from cells. While Forterre and collaborators contend that the unique genes found in giant viruses are a sign that they evolved before modern cells, Abergel and Claverie have a different explanation: Giant viruses may have evolved from a line of cells that is now extinct. According to this theory, the ancestor of giant viruses lost its ability to replicate as an independent life form and was forced to rely on other cells to copy its DNA. Pieces of these ancient cells’ genes survive in modern mimivirus, pandoravirus, and pithovirus, which would explain the unique genes found in this group. “Life didn’t have one single ancestor,” Claverie said. “There were a lot of cell-like organisms that were all competing, and there was one winner, which formed the basis for life as we know it today.”

Read the full article (and see the photos) here.
 

1405

Living Room / Re: Celluloid vs digital: what are the REAL differences?

« Last post by 40hz on July 31, 2014, 02:21 PM »

In other words if Q.T. has to switch to digital will his standard bag of tricks no longer work without laboriously relearning how to get the effects?  I'm just speculating.

-MilesAhead (July 31, 2014, 01:32 PM)

There's that too. Certain effects and looks are easier (or possible) to achieve with silver vs digital - and vice versa.

I'd guess it's somewhat similar to coding. Experienced professionals have their bag of tricks they're loathe to abandon when shifting from one type of media to another.

1406

Living Room / Re: Celluloid vs digital: what are the REAL differences?

« Last post by 40hz on July 31, 2014, 12:37 PM »

There's a tongue-in-cheek heavy metal rant that hits on much of the problem with digital - it's too tempting to abandon discipline and education and just let the technology drive the art form. With the result that a lot of "projects" make it to the screen which have technically advanced production values - but are very poor movies nonetheless.

Here's the rant I mentioned previously. It's about music, and metal, and it's over the top both in both the pronouncements made - and the language used to make them. (NSFW! You have been warned.) But it's spot on once you see the joke and read between the lines to get to what's really being said. I think it applies equally to movie making...or most other art forms.

Check it out:

1407

Living Room / Re: To Hell with Net Neutrality: Sprint to charge extra for Facebook access

« Last post by 40hz on July 31, 2014, 07:28 AM »

It strikes me more as what they see as a way to put a partial "unlimited" data plan in place.

AFAIK, Sprint doesn't offer new subscribers across the board unlimited data plans any more. I'm grandfathered in on one with AT&T. Which unfortunately makes getting a discounted new phone - or changing any of my existing services a lot of fun since I have to walk through a minefield of fine print and customer 'service' doubletalk to avoid 'accidentally' relinquishing my unlimited data plan when I do. (They almost got me last time.)
 

1408

Living Room / Re: Movies or films you've seen lately

« Last post by 40hz on July 31, 2014, 06:41 AM »

@Ren:



 

1409

Living Room / Re: Director wants his film on The Pirate Bay, pirates deliver…

« Last post by 40hz on July 30, 2014, 01:10 PM »

@Shades - as long as the Netherlands keep producing the likes of Sylvia Kristel, Carice van Houten, Halina Reijn, and Famke Janssen, I'm all for whatever film and breeding program the Dutch have embarked on. 

1410

General Software Discussion / Re: Cyberfox Anyone?

« Last post by 40hz on July 30, 2014, 01:00 PM »

For those who like Firefox forks on Linux, there's a native Pale Moon around.

-Tuxman (July 30, 2014, 06:11 AM)

+1! Good recommendation! It's my default choice when I need a full-featured browser running under Linux. Works like a charm for me with Debian-based distros. YMMV.

--------------------

@M - I definitely want to try that portable version of Cyberfox under Windows. I keep hoping I can eventually cram and run all the Windows things I need off a USB key for those increasingly infrequent occasions when I need to be in Windows. If all goes well, my old Windows PC will eventually be relegated to serving as a gaming platform.

1411

Living Room / Re: Movies or films you've seen lately

« Last post by 40hz on July 30, 2014, 12:54 PM »

The Conspiracy

Clever little faux(???) documentary that transitions rather nicely from the usual "found footage" to a pretty decent thriller. I found it really entertaining throughout - and even thought-provoking at times - despite how little is "new" in this picture.

The premise is simple. Two documentary filmmakers (a couple of semi-hipsters by the names of Aaron and Jim) are researching conspiracy advocates -  not with an interest in finding what truths may lie behind the theories themselves - but rather to gain insight into the minds and backgrounds of the people who do believe in such things.

      

Things go smoothly until their single best subject, a man by the name of Terrance, suddenly goes missing...

Despite this all being nothing new, the way the film handles what follows makes it a very enjoyable experience. With maybe one or two original surprises along the way?

Quiet Earth's review made a good point about this sort of picture:

...The "found footage" movie that pretty much jump-started the whole trend that continues to this day is obviously "The Blair Witch Project", and a large part of that film's initial success was the cleverness of a promotional campaign that made it unclear whether or not "Blair Witch" was, in fact, an actual documentary. These days, audiences are way too familiar with this approach, and even the claim in a movie's titles of "Inspired by a true story" doesn't carry the weight it once did. But now, with "The Conspiracy", we get a very different and very welcome riff on the formula. We're obviously watching something that is basically fiction, but that's not the point. The real burning question under everything isn't "Did this really happen?", but rather "Could this, in some form, already be happening?", and director Christopher MacBride uses our uncertainty to weave a fairly disturbing tapestry. The decision to pepper Aaron's and Jim's fictional journey with a veritable onslaught of persistent cultural conspiracy artifacts is not only brilliant but genuinely unnerving, so much so that by the end you may want to immediately head to the books to try and separate the concocted from the documented.

MacBride does a really good job of ramping up a steady crescendo of tension, and in terms of pacing is clearly drawing inspiration from "JFK" and "All the President's Men" (which is referenced directly in one scene). One thing that struck me is that neither Aaron or Jim is particularly charismatic at the film's outset; both have a vaguely smug hipster bent, but by the end I'd done a complete turnaround, and this is to the filmmakers' credit. The fear of the ominous "They" certainly does bring us together and put aside our petty differences, at least for an hour and a half. And what the viewer does with the unease he or she takes from the theater is his or her own business, of course, so I won't try and turn a review into a forum for my own beliefs or theories.

But, "The Conspiracy" is guaranteed to provoke talk, at least in some circles, and regardless of whether or not it's a conscientious whistle-blower or a cynical, cash-in prank (for the record, I'm not sure either way) it's always good to keep this particular discourse alive. After all, the worst case scenario might not be true, and the world's awfulness is just relatively random. But what if it's not? Where "The Conspiracy" excels is in how it compels us to consider if any of us would actually want to know the truth, no matter the cost.

Good flick! Recommended.

1412

Living Room / Re: Guess how useful virus scanners are?

« Last post by 40hz on July 29, 2014, 04:12 PM »

I meant "give away" as in, let the enemy know my defenses.

-MilesAhead (July 29, 2014, 03:15 PM)

Ah! I see...

Well, I'd like to see any non-pro break through mine even if they did know my setup.

And I'd be very (albeit pleasantly) surprised if (even not knowing anything about my setup) a real professional cyber-baddie couldn't get through.

 

1413

General Software Discussion / Re: jv16 PowerTools - using Indiegogo to 'fund'' open-sourcing it

« Last post by 40hz on July 29, 2014, 04:06 PM »

I had the feeling that this would be the end of this story.  And another blow is dealt to the idea of crowdfunding in the minds of the masses.

-wraith808 (July 29, 2014, 03:39 PM)

Yup.

BTW...is it just me...or do about half the comments posted on the campaign site read like astroturf?

1414

Living Room / Re: Guess how useful virus scanners are?

« Last post by 40hz on July 29, 2014, 03:08 PM »

he trouble with arguing against AV on forums, other than that the interest on the other side is vested, is that to make your point you have to give away your disaster avoidance/recovery strategies.

-MilesAhead (July 29, 2014, 02:17 PM)

Except for here! Most (all?) of us here freely provide the very same advice and assistance we'll charge our clients to get.

Gotta love DoCo.

1415

General Software Discussion / Re: Is Antivirus Software a Waste of Money?

« Last post by 40hz on July 29, 2014, 01:39 PM »

Given the popularity of the technology, and ease of blending in...those things can be a real bitch to spot. And as a card carrying BOFH, it truly pains me to say it ... But it's damn hard to blame the user for missing one of these.

-Stoic Joker (July 29, 2014, 11:36 AM)

Agree. This particular client isn't a fool. I've worked with her for about 10 years now. She's actually one of those responsible types who made sure she was tech-saavy above and beyond the requirements of her job. And she was devastated when this thing hit. Especially once she realized just how serious it was. Being a remote-located employee made her especially vulnerable. And being a non-dork, the very first thing she did was assume she herself had done something stupid. (She didn't btw.)

To make it even more interesting, the odds are pretty good that if it actually did come in via an infected attachment (as I suspect it did), the person who sent it to her didn't know it was loaded. Her company passes a lot of attachments back and forth for follow-up work, processing, client contact, etc. Some of it originates in-house. But the rest (60-70%) is generated by their clients. So it could have come from anywhere.

What's disturbing is that their e-mail provider's security didn't twig on it either. Can hardly blame the desktop when it's not showing a blip on the server's scanners, right? Her only warnings were that (a) her machine seemed ever so slightly slower starting up roughly three mornings before everything went south (she manually reboots each morning just to make sure it's "tidy" as she puts it) - and (b) that her scheduled Windows Update check (running daily at midnight and 6:00am) failed to complete two times in a row the day it happened.

This ain't script-kiddie stuff she got hit with. This is definitely the work of pros.

Scary! And just the tip of the iceberg I'm afraid.

1416

Non-Windows Software / Re: *NIX: Pipelight has a new website - plus new version available

« Last post by 40hz on July 29, 2014, 09:41 AM »

It's pedantic, you native American-English human! 

-Tuxman (July 29, 2014, 09:36 AM)

It was a lame attempt at a pun. (i.e "pen" as in written, as in one who pens pedantic posts?)

I know...pretty bad, right? Sorry.

Later! Gotta run.

1417

Non-Windows Software / Re: *NIX: Pipelight has a new website - plus new version available

« Last post by 40hz on July 29, 2014, 09:34 AM »

^Done. Scratch curmudgeonish. Pendantic it is then.

1418

Non-Windows Software / Re: *NIX: Pipelight has a new website - plus new version available

« Last post by 40hz on July 29, 2014, 09:29 AM »

Thanks for listening.

-Tuxman (July 29, 2014, 09:14 AM)

Thanks for replying! I've long suspected I'm guilty of misinterpreting some of your posts. Let's move forward on that note.
-------------------------------------

Note: perhaps "hostile" and "pendantic" aren't good descriptive terms. Perhaps curmudgeonish as "in the manner or style of a curmudgeon" would be more accurate?

cur·mud·geon
noun \(ˌ)kər-ˈmə-jən\

A  person (especially an old man) who is easily annoyed or angered and who often complains

I've been called a curmudgeon by some. I take it as a personal badge of honor. (In the context it was said, of course. )

1419

Non-Windows Software / Re: *NIX: Pipelight has a new website - plus new version available

« Last post by 40hz on July 29, 2014, 09:02 AM »

So, given that you really want to keep a misleading thread title, let me get into the contents then:

How is it "good news" that a Windows binary (Pipelight) which can access Windows plug-ins can run on Wine "now"?

-Tuxman (July 29, 2014, 08:22 AM)

I think you might possibly lack sufficient familiarity with colloquial American-English usage and vocabulary such that I suspect you tend to misinterpret - and sometimes read far more into what is being said - than what is actually being said. As a result you can occasionally come across as being rather hostile and pedantic. Which I'd like to think is not your actual intent.

About the best I can suggest is to keep in mind that American-English is a very fluid and flexible language. It does not have, nor seek to duplicate, the level of grammatical precision some languages employ. It is also very context sensitive - which is a fancy way of saying grammatical rules (and sometimes actual words) are themselves less important than understanding the context in which something is being said. That's a tricky thing to manage. And it does lead to some major misunderstandings from time to time - even among native speakers. But that's the way the language works here.

So if you don't mind, I'll leave my OP as is. I doubt it's a causing concern or confusion to many (if any) of the other readers. And while I now understand what you're saying (and thanks for elaborating) and I can now see the point you're trying to make, in the context of the post itself, it's somewhat hair-splitting and slightly OT.

Of course, that may depend on how you interpret the title of this discussion board. You seem to be taking it to mean a place to discuss native-coded non-Windows software. The rest of us see it as a place to discuss software that does not require Windows be the OS in order to run it. As Mouser put in the keystone post:

I thought we might try adding a new section of the forum specifically for discussion of non-Windows software (and hardware), so here it is!

I know we have lots of people on DC that love linux, embedded hardware like Raspberry Pi, mac, android and ios, and it's probably time we had a special section for such discussions.  It would also be a good place to discuss cross-platform software, and may also be a good place to discuss non-windows related hardware.

Don't be shy about posting here -- it may take a little while for this section to reach critical mass.

I hope this helps you better understand where I'm coming from, and why I don't feel the need to either change the original post or drop *NIX from its title.

If that's not acceptable to you, then I'm afraid we'll just have to "agree to disagree" on this point, since this side-discussion can only start going in circles if it continues much longer.

Cheers!

1420

Non-Windows Software / Re: *NIX: Pipelight has a new website - plus new version available

« Last post by 40hz on July 29, 2014, 08:17 AM »

My point would be that my initial point that "*NIX" is a lie here still persists.

-Tuxman (July 29, 2014, 08:14 AM)

"Lie" is a very strong word. In English at least.

And not really accurate - or even relevant - in this context.

In English at least.

1421

Non-Windows Software / Re: *NIX: Pipelight has a new website - plus new version available

« Last post by 40hz on July 29, 2014, 08:12 AM »

No, this isn't "*NIX software". This is "Windows software which also runs on systems which can pretend to be Windows".

-Tuxman (July 29, 2014, 07:32 AM)

And your point, assuming there is one, would be?

1422

General Software Discussion / Re: Is Antivirus Software a Waste of Money?

« Last post by 40hz on July 29, 2014, 07:56 AM »

I suspect a lot of these things would get past most, if not all anti-viruses.

-tomos (July 29, 2014, 06:33 AM)

That seems to be the case of late with this new breed of malware.

Especially since it probably came in piggy-backed on a PDF attachment to an e-mail from a trusted sender. Her Acrobat Reader was two generations old. Everything else was fairly up to date except for her JRE which was also a full version back. So those two were the most likely initial attack vectors. At least as far as we could semi-determine (i.e. guess.) She gets a lot of company and client-generated PDF and document attachments with her e-mail.

This is the first time I've actually seen rather than just heard about a case of ransomware. And I hope it's my last. This puppy was a nasty piece of work. We couldn't sanitize her drive. And we used every trick in the book. Inside the machine the drive kept calmly reinfecting itself no matter what was done to it. You could see it spawning new processes in taskman even while the scanners were busily quarantining it. Since this was happening in safe mode, I suspect whatever it ultimately was also had a rooting capability.

Taken out and scrubbed using a non-Windows environment to recover what little data could be recovered rendered it unbootable. Whoever programmed this attack was one savvy and mean SOB, that's for sure.

Thank goodness (in her case) for a well-disciplined backup habit. If she didn't have that, it would have been really bad for her.

1423

Non-Windows Software / Re: *NIX: Pipelight has a new website - plus new version available

« Last post by 40hz on July 29, 2014, 07:22 AM »

"*NIX" for "Linux-only" is quite optimistic.

-Tuxman (July 29, 2014, 07:02 AM)

Just an FYI: "*NIX" stands for any variant OS that is Unix-based or Unix-like. So that would mean Linux or Unix since the asterisk is the wildcard character. (Note: If you go to the website you'll see installation instructions for FreeBSD and PC-BSD. Isn't that wonderful? )

I'm also not sure what you mean by "optimistic" in this context.



 

1424

Non-Windows Software / *NIX: Pipelight has a new website - plus new version available

« Last post by 40hz on July 29, 2014, 06:46 AM »

This is good news!



If you don't know what Pipelight is, here's the description from the project website:

Pipelight is a wrapper for using Windows plugins in Linux browsers and therefore giving you the possibility to access services which are otherwise not available for Linux users. Typical examples of such services are Netflix and Amazon Instant, which both use the proprietary browser plugin Silverlight. These services cannot normally be used on Linux since this plugin is only available for Windows, and the only open source alternative (Moonlight) is lacking support for DRM.

Pipelight helps you access these services by using the original Silverlight plugin directly in your browser, all while giving you a better hardware acceleration and performance than a virtual machine. Besides Silverlight, you can also use a variety of other plugins that are supported by Pipelight. Take a look at the installation page for a complete list.

Pipelight uses a patched wine version to provide a windows environment to the plugins, but you do not need to worry about this as Pipelight will take care of installing, configuring and updating all supported plugins. From the perspective of the browser these plugins will behave just like any other normal Linux plugin after you have enabled them.

More information and installation instructions are available at the website.

1425

General Software Discussion / Re: diagnostic tool

« Last post by 40hz on July 29, 2014, 06:25 AM »

There's tons of software that will list processes and show CPU/RAM utilization for them.

But that won't identify a conflict, or a process causing a "lag" in another process.

About the only thing that will identify it (if that's really what the problem is) is going through a tedious process of elimination using msconfig. The procedure is discussed here if you don't already know how to do it.

Luck!